FAMILY AID

OUR PROJECTS

Sunflowers Family Aid Programmes

The Sunflowers Family Aid Programme provides help and support for families in difficult circumstances, especially those with sick or special needs children. We also help children to find foster homes in Belarus in cooperation with the local services. All too often children end up in State Orphanages due to neglect, alchol and/or physical abuse, abandonment etc..

This is Sasha and his little brother Zhenya who had been living in the social Orphanage in Luninets. They have been since fostered by a loving family in Belarus with the help of The Sunflowers. The Sunflowers Chernobyl Appeal, through our family aid programme helps their new family and encourages families in Belarus to foster children. They are very happy in their new home and have setteled in well with their new brothers and sisters.

The photo above shows Interpeter Alla Kalinouskaya and Sunflowers Director Pat Dillon visiting a family in the contaminated area. There are hundreds of families like this in similar circumstances living in the area where we work. The Sunflowers family aid programme has emergency funds in place for such families and their children, and our Day Centres will be places of refuge and comfort and help to provide many essential services for them.

Above L & R; Sunflowers Volunteers Sandra Dowling from Cork, and Ita Byrnes from Galway visit Svetlana and her son Vitaly, who is autistic. The photo above shows Ura, with his mother and grandmother. Ura has been to Ireland several times over the years for on-going medical treatment through our rest and recuperation programme.

L & R; The Sunflowers Volunteers visiting families living in one of the radiation contaminated areas. The Sunflowers family aid programme helps families living in poor living conditions. We also work closely with local school teachers to identify children who might be at risk of neglect or abuse. Children living in remote areas can sometimes be particularly vulnerable.

Above photos L & R; This is 11yr old Lisa. The Sunflowers brought Lisa and her mother Valentina to Ireland for a month of rest and recuperation.Natasha pictured on right and her Daughter Dasha, who suffered complications at birth and as a result is now severely brain damaged and blind. Little Dasha also suffers from seizures, sometimes as many as twenty seizures a day. The Sunflowers family aid programme helps with medicine and financial aid when necessary.